Betty Smith - Joy in the Morning

Joy in the Morning by Betty  Smith
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Published by Buccaneer Books
Borrowed @ Central State Library, Chandigarh.

The book is set in the early 1900s.  The heroine, Annie has just turned 18.  She has packed her bag and left home to travel to where her boyfriend, Carl lives.  Carl is a law student in the university town of --.  They go straight to get married.  They have barely any money.  All they have is love for each other and a hankering to be together for ever.

Times are hard.  Carl works part time and studies.  Annie also finds work and they manage to scrape by, counting pennies and living cheap.

It is a heartwarming tale of young love.  Not the starry eyed kinds you find in romance books, but the kind that gives you the reality behind love stories.  Annie and Carl fight, and kiss and make up.

This is a story of their early life together.  The story is based on the author's own experience.

I read an excerpt of this book in an old issue of Reader's Digest.  I loved it instantly.  Almost by serendipity, I found the book in my local Central State Library.  The book was every bit as good as the excerpt.  This happened nearly fifteen years ago.

On a recent trip to the same library, I chanced upon the same book once more.  I just had to pick it up again to read it once more.  I was charmed anew by this lovely story.  But this time, I managed to write about it.


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Alexander McCall Smith - The Sunday Philosophy Club Series or Isabel Dalhousie Series

Isabel Dalhousie by Alexander McCall Smith
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I read the entire series of Isabel Dalhousie/Sunday Philosophy Club. I actually bought the entire series, which is something I have NEVER done. I had to buy the books because they were not available in the library.

The fact that I was willing to spend my money on so many of these books speaks of the love I have for the Isabel Dalhousie series.

These books are not flashy fiction. Readers of action thrillers will do well to keep far away from these books. Readers who love Jane Austen, Anne Tyler, Ruskin Bond and similar authors will love these series.

The books have a gentle laid back tone. Isabel Dalhousie is a rich woman. She edits a philosophy journal (Review of Applied Ethics) and had once founded Sunday Philosophy Club. The club closed down as the members did not have time for it.

Ruminating on philosophical aspects is what comes naturally to Isabel. She is a bit of an old fashioned girl. She likes following social niceties. She likes her old fashioned house that she inherited from her parents. She loves her unfashionable green Swedish car. She loves living her quiet, sedentary life in Edinburgh.

She brings to mind a leisurely era when people had time to lunch and dine gracefully, go to concerts, visit museums and art galleries, or merely walk about the town. Although she lives in our times, there are no mentions of mobile phones and dish TV. Emails and internet are referred to, but clearly, Isabel is a woman who prefers her letters handwritten or, at the very least, printed.

The mysteries that Isabel solves, are almost the side plot in each book. At times, the mystery is not satisfactorily solved even. But she likes what she learns out of each encounter. She likes meeting new people and she likes being allowed to look into their world.

I have completed all the nine books in the series. And absolutely adored all of them.Alexander McCall Smith

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Monisha Rajesh - Around India in 80 trains

Around India in 80 Trains by Monisha Rajesh
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

A Chennai girl by origin and a British girl by nationality and upbringing, Monisha Rajesh seeks to examine her roots by opting for a journey around India in 80 trains.

The title is a nice salaam to Jules Verne.

Monisha's Phileas Fogg has a Passepartout of her own.  A photographer who is looking to improve his resume.  They are not ideal companions, but they manage to stick together through thick and thin.

As we know, taking trains in India is not an easy task.  More than anything else, you have to fight Grime.  Even a 'clean' train like a Shatabdi or a Rajdhani makes you look dusty and covered in a stink straight from an overused lavatory that just cannot be kept clean.

Then, you have to fight the awkward booking system.  Oh ok, we do have the irctc.com now to aid us in booking our journeys.  But even so, booking journeys at a pinch is not easy.  For Monisha and P. it is the grim faced Anusha who helps book them into trains across India.

Next comes grappling with food.  Getting clean food to eat and clean water to drink can be a struggle when marooned at smaller stations.  Our train food is quite inedible at times and the local station food can be dodgy.

Monisha and P manage to overcome all these and survive to bring us this book.

To vow and keep up the promise to travel to as many parts of India as possible in 80 trains is a humungous task on its own.  To turn it into an entertaining book is another major task.

The book falls into that sweet spot between informative and entertaining.  It is full of witty anecdotes that keep you chuckling as you turn the pages.

I wish there was a chronological information about the trains taken.  It would have made it easy to refer to various journeys.  Also, some of the anecdotes end abruptly, making you feel something is missing.

This is a unique book.  It is about trains.  It is about diversity that is India.  It is about life.


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Kazuo Ishiguro - Never Let Me Go

Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro



You get a feeling that there is something different about the world you are reading about when you are already a few pages into the book.




It is not a usual coming-of-age book. Kathy reminiscences about her childhood, about her days at Hailsham, a premium boarding school that she went to.




Ruth, Tommy and the narrator of this story, Kathy were together in that school. There was a bit of a mystery hanging over the school. Although their teachers, called "Guardians" are as rigid as any teacher found in any boarding school, there is one Guardian who seems to treat them differently.




From her, the children get some ominous hints about their future.




We learn the story through the narrator Kathy, who reveals the story mostly chronologically.




This facility, Hailsham is not a school. It is a place where human clones are reared for their organs. The children are cared for because a healthy child will be able to yield healthy organs.




Will the children, Kathy, Tommy and Ruth, be able to chart a different life?




Are human beings capable of mercy? Can human beings deal fairly as far as other species are concerned? I think we know the answer to that already.




Kazuo Ishiguro treats this tale, which could easily drip with horror, with gentleness. The shocking facts of the fate of the children are revealed gradually and with a sparse and a deft touch.




The novel is immensely readable. Years ago, I picked up a book called Curious case of the dog in the nighttime, and found it un-putdownable. This book was the only novel I read from cover to cover at a stretch after that.


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Cap Lesesne - Confessions of a Park Avenue Plastic Surgeon

Confessions of a Park Avenue Plastic Surgeon by Cap Lesesne
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I liked the book.  It is a memoire of a plastic surgeon.  There are not too many 'revelations' about celebrity clients.  They are merely hinted at.

There are times when the book reads like a documentary.  He lists the steps a person seeking plastic surgery should go through, the ways in which a client should assess a surgeon.  There is a chapter titled "Failures (and what to ask a surgeon)".

He even had a section in which he mentions skin-care.

"Some of the best skin I've ever seen belongs to women who cleanse with cold water and soap, then apply a mild moisturizer on the dry spots."

He recommends use of sunscreen lotion with SPF greater than 20, and re-application every two hours.

Exfoliate the skin regularly, he says.  He even recommends microdermabrasion - spraying of fine crystals at the skin to loosen dead tissue.

Hmm.. I confess, I found this part of the book quite interesting.

As for the rest, he writes about his education, how he got into plastic surgery.  He has some interesting anecdotes to narrate.



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Marie Desplechin -Sans Moi

Sans Moi by Marie Desplechin


It was a wonderful book.  So different from the usual "stories".  It was about a year in the life of Anna, a writer and a single mother.  She hires a young girl Olivia as a babysitter.  Olivia is a recovering drug addict with several other issues as well.  On the face of it, Olivia is highly unsuitable as a babysitter, but yet she is a person with a lot of promise.

Anna and Olivia help each other out and develop a friendship.

It was likened to a novel by Colette, but it wasn't.  Do not look for anything naughty in here.

The book was about faith and trust and healing.  Excellent!


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